Warning: This post contains spoilers for season 2, episode 2 of The Last of Us. Pedro Pascal still can't really wrap his head around what just happened. On the Sunday, April 20 episode of The Last of Us season 2, Pascal's character Joel took his final bow as Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) killed him in a violent act of revenge over his murder of her father, an unarmed doctor, in season 1, while Ellie (Bella Ramsey) watched. The actor knew what his character's fate was — the series is adapted from the hit video game of the same name, and in The Last of Us Part II, Abby killed Joel — but that doesn't mean he's processed it. In fact, he's "in active denial," he told Entertainment Weekly. "I realize this more and more as I get older, I find myself slipping into denial that anything is over. I know that I'm forever bonded to so many members of the experience and just have to see them under different circumstances, but never will under the circumstances of playing Joel on The Last of Us," Pascal, 50, said. He continued, "And, no, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it because it makes me sad." Pascal said there was "always an understanding that [the show] would stay true to the source material in a specific way," so his death was "just a matter of how and when." Still, he said, "It's not like they said, 'Hey, we kill you at the beginning of season 2.'" For the team behind the camera, the "hardest part" of Joel's death scene was "watching Bella watching it happen," co-showrunner Craig Mazin told EW, because of how "extraordinarily close" the actors are in real life. "They worked hand in glove, they care deeply about each other. If you're going to pretend to be in that moment, it's probably a simple thing, but this isn't pretend," he said. "I can tell you just from being in that room, it's happening: The pain that [Ellie's] feeling there and then that rage … That is not calculated or synthetic. It was hard to feel like we were breaking something that we had all spent so much time very carefully building and making work." Ramsey, 21, told the outlet they've "never cried reading a piece of writing before, but I had such a gastral reaction to it." "It's almost like we've played that dynamic, me and Pedro, for a year, and it feels like father-daughter in some way. I think my reaction to that being over was quite a gradual feeling. Also knowing that that would be the end of Pedro and us two working together in this capacity." Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. New episodes of The Last of Us season 2 premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.